Posted
by
timothy
on Wednesday September 26, 2012 @02:16PM
from the was-it-yggdrasil? dept.

colinneagle writes "Linux dude Bryan Lunduke blogged here about the top three approaches he thinks are the easiest for new users to pick up Linux. Lunduke's, for example, went Ubuntu -> Arch -> openSUSE. It raises a question that Slashdot could answer well in the comments: what's your distro use order from beginning to now? Maybe we could spot some trends."

Ran sw first in the mid 90's... ran away for quite a few years... then landed on Debian about 2006 or so... then Ubuntu, and now on Mint for the last 2 years. See, its not about increasing complexity, but less...

Slackware on Floppies (Oh so many floppies)Then Mandrake, and an assortment of "mini-distros" to run custom hardware like routersThen RedhatThen DebianThen back to RedhatThen FedoraBriefly Ubuntu, then back to FedoraThen CentOSThen a combination of Fedora, CentOS and Debian, depending on which system. The Clusters I work with are all CentOS, some of the infrastructure systems (ie: DNS, database server,...) are Debian, end user workstations and my home system are Fedora.

Pretty much the same. 1995ish was Slackware, followed by Red Hat sometime after 1997, followed by CentOS in the later 2000's. Fiddled with Debian, but no company I have worked for has ever used it, so my interest has been light.

I generally don't use Linux for a desktop machine, so some of the more user friendly versions I haven't bothered much with, although I've installed many of them at one time or another to see what the fuss is all about.

Windows is a piece of crap, but still much better for a desktop workstation than any Linux (or UNIX) I have come across.

Wait, what? Windows is a piece of crap, but still better than Linux? I think at least one of these words does not mean what you think it means.;-)

I started with Slackware in '95, and tried various other distros over the years, though I couldn't name them all or tell you the order. RedHat, Debian, Gentoo, CentOS, FreeBSD, SuSE... it's all a hazy blur now... I kept a dual-boot Windows partition around for a while, but used it less and less, and finally stopped using it in the early 2000's. (I still have WinX

The switch to caldera included an official copy of word perfect... Those were the days, I could actually do my home work on linux. When GIMP came out, I finally got to drop dual booting in to widows, which was in 98 I think, windows free since.

Slackware once cost me $300 dollars to download on a +800 dialup service. 30 hours was a long time to be online back in those days....seemed like a good

+1 on this. I installed Slackware '96 back when the penguin was a platypus. Learning how to compile stuff from source is much better for a beginner (albeit more difficult) than learning to use a package management system like yum or dpkg.

Oh, so many, many floppies... mostly from old Office installs, outdated games, and a few AOL / Compuserve floppies from before they started mailbombing CDs

Then RH4... until my server got owned by a remote samba exploit. Migrated to Debian that weekend. More or less skipped Ubuntu, but nowadays mostly go to Linux Mint. Somewhere in there I also installed a box off of a KNOPPIX LiveCD. And then I did a lot of stuff on RHEL/CentOS 5 & 6 for work.

I started with Slackware, moved on to Mandrake a few years later, then Ubuntu for a few years, now I use Debian.

My very first experience with linux was around 1995 or 1996. It was somewhat comical as I ended up getting hacked within minutes of installing Slackware for the first time. Back then Slackware had a boot disk and a root disk that were used to install it. I assumed that the root disk was related to the root account. I thought it was some type of security measure, like a hardware dongle, where you h

Anyway, I remember downloading the dist, in "sections" (e.g., X11), each spanning a number of floppy disks with a grand total of 70+ floppies. Then from there I installed linux. If all went well, it usually took about a day to get it up and running, start (download) to finish (first full boot). (Keep in mind, this was in the day of ADSL.) Horrible.

These days, I grab random different ones I've seen recent reviews for and download and boot just for fun. Typically I just download the iso's and point a virtual CD drive from vmware or some virtual pc and boot and install. Much nicer, usually less than an hour.

When I decided to learn linux I knew no better; and started with gentoo. Mind you, they lacked an installer at the time, and I decided to start from boot strap. Again, I knew no better. But jesus did I learn about linux and computers in general. Gentoo has (had?) one of the most amazing communities I've ever encountered.
Later on I switched to ubuntu, and played around with various flavors like knoppix and mint. But these days I pretty much stick with centos - and prefer OSX merely for bash.

I love Linux and all, but the mainstream support of OS X combined with UNIX under the hood made the Mac the best platform for me. Sure, it's much more expensive, but I don't mind the additional money... after all, I am on my computer all the time anyway. I might as well spend the cash for the one I like best.

Started with Slackware in the early days, then moved to Debian. Stayed with Debian until Archlinux showed up, been with it since. However, been trying out Ubuntu for a few years every now and then just to check it out.

Slack and Gentoo lasted for a couple years each, Ubuntu was a dual-boot with Win XP, and Mint I only ran for a short time before going to Win 7. The progression was basically towards what would mean less time used sustaining vs using the computer.

Then RedHat5.2 upgraded to RedHat6.0. I think I tried Caldera in there for a while, but didn't use it much, also Mandrake, but again, only to try it out. I pretty much stayed with RedHat until I discovered Gentoo. Even after I started using Gentoo as a desktop I mainly used RedHat on servers until I discovered Debian.

Gentoo is still my favored distro for my main personal workstation. My servers are mainly Debian, although I use CentOS and Scientific L

Ubuntu 9.10, then the subsequent versions before some annoyance made me move to Linux Mint, while dabbling at Arch quite recently. I still think Ubuntu (I am back to using Ubuntu, except for trying Mint for a while when a new version is out) is better in the long run compared to Mint (upgrading being the chief problem), but Mint with VLC and stuff preinstalled is better for new users. At least then they won't be disappointed that not even simple mp3/avi files will play. But installing with an internet conne

Used Redhat back in the day. Everybody did. Remember the ads in the Linux Journal with the guy in the red hat handing off an attache case to someone else in a trenchcoat?

It was quirky, but worked. KDE had everything you needed: KMail, KOffice, Konqueror. nedit for editing files.

Later I got a desktop that had XP already installed. And it was "good enough". So I used it, and continued to use it. I had a a lot of open source software installed: Firefox, putty, Cygwin, Gimp, OpenOffice, etc.

After that I fell victim to some really hard to remove viruses, and decided that it was time to move on.

By that time, Redhat had abandoned the desktop, so I checked out what everybody was talking about: the new distro with the funny name, Ubuntu.

I installed 10.04, and stuck with it. I had read about Unity/Gnome3 and didn't like what I had heard. I thought that I would have to find another distro, which would probably be a pain since Ubuntu had enough momentum that you can usually always find a specific answer to a problem you might be having.

Also, Ubuntu is highly useful on the server. You can't use RHell unless you shell out $$. And Centos doesn't have any back--it's so messed up that a guy left the project, and the rest of the guys had to beg him for the domain and donation account. Their versions come out much later than RedHat releases, and RHell generally is many versions behind Ubuntu in software releases, many of which have features that are sorely needed. Also, RHell repositories barely have any packages compared to Ubuntu. (True, there's a community effort called RPMForge, but if you want to go with that, why are you going with the "conservative" distro? Dissonance.)

After Precise 12.04 came out, I decided to give it a try. By that time Unity had actually become a useful environment, making most power users/devs more productive. And so here I'll probably stay, both on the desktop and the server.

I don't use Linux, so I've always been baffled by this: why do you need to swap distros? What's up with this OS that everyone feels the need to jump around all the time? It's like a geek rite of passage to find the most obscure distro you can, it seems. I don't get it.

When you first start out everything is so new and exciting. You first just want to try anything and everything. You try a few things, learn some new tricks with every distro. Eventually you find one you love, and stick with it. After a few years you see all these hott young distros and get curious and give them a good fsck under a VM or an old box. Every single time you think to yourself "never again", but they always lure you back in because the old ball and chain isn't quite as flexible.As you get older y

Then I bought a Magazine with a copy of SuSE 7.0 on it. I stuck with SuSE until 9 something, about the Novel buyout. I felt bad fleeing about the time Novel got them because I was a big fan of Netware.

A friend had been singing the praises of Debian to me for quite a while, so I jumped on board during etch. I fought tooth and nail to stay on Debian but after Ubuntu took off the Debian developers seemed to be okay with being the "

The hardest thing mixed in there was the a.out->ELF migration, for which I rebuilt everything on the system by hand sort of like a primitive LFS. It was worth doing once--you learn a fair bit in the process--but made it so I have little interest in LFS or similar distros going forward.

Started with Slackware in 2002. Learned how to make menuconfig on the kernel, and generally how to compile and install apps & libraries from source. Then I moved around, trying Redhat, Fedora and Mandrake before settling on Gentoo for awhile.

After twiddling with Gentoo for several months I kind of got over the fun of waiting for everything to compile.

I found OpenSUSE somewhere along version 9, fell in love with it and haven't looked back. I'm firmly in the OpenSUSE camp and would like to stay here as long as possible.

Redhat was the first, then I dipped into Gentoo for a bit, I think there was a short period where I used freebsd (for routing/firewall), and my last was Ubuntu - which I'm not particularly fond of. At work, it's pretty much redhat.

Debian would run on the Alpha machine I was playing with at the time. Shortly after that I got a Fedora distro running on a second machine. That combination stayed with me until the Alpha died, and the next install, one I actually had to do real work with, was Ubuntu. I did a number of Ubuntu installs but got fed up, and now new installs are Mint. I have three Fedora, one Ubuntu, and one Mint under my direct control right now, and I am about to bring up a second Mint box for gaming -- thank you Humble Bundl

I suspect that if there are any trends to be spotted, they'll have to do when people began to use Linux more than what they began with. The distros available to anyone with broadband today are far more numerous than those once available to us. My first exposure to Linux, e.g., was an early iteration of S.u.s.e. included with a magazine. I could not at that time (90s) have hoped to download a full distro on my ~28k dial-up.

Here, however, is a trend I think we'll certainly find. Many seem to go through a stage where trying different distros for a couple months at a time is fun. Then they get sick of backing data up, tinkering with settings, and explaining to significant others why the computer isn't working at the moment. Whereupon they settle on whatever distro they feel like they'll have to fool with the least.

Work is a mix of FreeBSD, Centos, Red Hat, SuSE and OpenSuSE. I have also worked on AIX, Sun Solaris, HPUX, Tru64, NetBSD and others.

I like the stability, flexibility and simplicity of Slackware, and the security and stability of OpenBSD. Both of these are, in my opinion, the open-source projects that have stayed the closest to their roots and offer the best experience overall across platforms and applications.

Started off in '95 with Slackware 2.2.0 (kernel 1.2.13), though I also dabbled with a retail version of RedHat 5 and I think Mandrake "Secure" Linux 6.x ('secure' in that it came with SSL tech, back when it was still encumbered by the RSA patent [slashdot.org] and cost money to deploy).

When I started working in the 'real world' (circa 2000) RedHat 6.2 - 7.3. These days, anything not running OS X is running either Ubuntu (laptops and workstations), Fedora (LXDE spin for older hardware), or CentOS (servers).

Slackware, RedHat, Mandrake, Mandriva, brief parallel running of yellowdog on PowerPC, Fedora, Ubuntu, and last but not least Mint. Not to mention AIX, which as I used to tell my customers is IBMs version of Linux. Oh, how my colleagues from Austin, TX used to laugh.

My first was Red Hat 7.x out of the back of a book I bought at Barnes and Noble. I got a number of later Red Hat distros the same way, largely because downloading ISOs isn’t an option when you’re on dial-up.

The first set of ISOs I did download was for Slackware. Can’t remember the version, but I ran it until a hard drive died. Kinda lost the ability to run a full-size distro without a hard drive.

(At some point prior to Slackware I fooled around with OpenBSD. Not entirely relevant, but true

Slackware -> Red Hat -> Mandrake. From there I spread out to Ubuntu, OpenBSD (not Linux, I know), more Red Hat, CentOS. I've poked around at others but that's the list of ones I've installed and used for any length of time. I did order the most recent Slackware distro but it must have gotten lost in the e-mail as I never received it:(

Tried RedHat and Mandrake a couple of times, 10+ years ago. Had to go back to Windows, I needed more support than was available to get proper drivers, etc, working.

Free Geek version of Debian around 2004.Mostly worked, except lacking good image editing. That was partly hardware limitations, not the OS.

Ubuntu since about 2008. Finished migration from Windows in 2011, with Gimp v2.5+ and Bamboo graphics tablet being the last changes. I think I have Win7 on a laptop that gathers dust in a closet, but worki

Which I was able to purchase from Best Buy. (1999-2000ish) They also had SuSe which I went to next. Later on I went to Debian but that was via mail order. I forget what the price was but it was cheap. I gave Mandrake a try there after but went back to Debian. I'm currently using Kubuntu but have decided to go back to Debian again. (or possibly Arch)

My main reason for Ubuntu/Kubuntu was that it just works, mostly, and I have work to do which is more important than trying to get my desktop going to do the

I started with OpenSuse, Moved to Ubuntu, Moved to Arch and Now I use Gentoo. Basically I kept stepping up the control I had from a user prospective. Right now I'm where I want to be, I have the ideal balance of control / power and ease.

Red Hat (around 95 or 96, installed it on my girlfriends parents computer since I was on Amiga at that time)Slackware (1998-2000, stopped using Linux for a while after that - not slackwares fault)...... (Windows/FreeBSD)Debian (2002-2004, discovered the wonders of apt)Debian on the server (2002-)Ubuntu/Xubuntu (2004-2010. 2004 was the year of the Linux Desktop when stuff just worked out of the box for the first time)Mint (2012-. Cinnamon edition)

Started with Slackware in 93/94 (I think, just remember a ton of floppies and I definitely used Slack back then, just don't know that I started with a distro, this was kernel.98alpha or so)I know I played with Yggdrasil (that became SuSE, right?)After that everything is pretty hazy, but I spent many years on Debian then switched to Gentoo a couple years ago.

On the other hand I professionally support RedHat and OL (and any other enterprise flavor should something broken come up).

At home I've only ever used Slackware, from 1997 (Slackware 3.1 aka Slackware '96) to the present day.
I did my thesis on a Slackware box, initially a 486/66, upgraded to a snazzy (?) Pentium 233 MMX. My personal development/play machine at work is Slackware.

The Powers That Be insist on RedHat for production, but tolerate us using CentOS for development. So be it.

I've played with Debian on Sun UltraSPARC boxes, but the novelty has since worn off.